James Ferguson and NY Fashion Week?

With NY Fashion Week well underway, New York Magazine’s fashion section, The Cut, posted online an article contemplating the mysteries of fashion language – citing anthropologist James Ferguson and sociolinguist Penny Eckert in the process. A sample:

“Such abstract language reminded [Eckert] of the work of anthropologist James Ferguson, who studies urban life in the Copperbelt in Africa, and ‘commented that there are people in urban settings who would make stylistic moves that were meaningless…'”